Being on the road for work most of the year I had mistakenly missed a couple payments to my National City credit card.
When I called to pay I mentioned my forgetfulness to the representative. He asked me if I had a National City checking account (which I do) and thus proceeded to tell me about a service that would automatically take a specified amount of money out of my National City checking account each month to go towards my National City credit card.
Obviously, I liked this idea and we proceeded to discuss what amount I should decide to have deducted each month. I debated for a minute and decided that since I didn't use the card that much that I would stick with $75. It would be enough to at least cover the minimum payment if I were to miss a payment again but not too much where I would over pay.
Fast forward about 10 months. I was home going through my bills and statements and noticed that my checking account had been getting a $10 fee each month. I called National City and they couldn't figure out what the fee was for. I noticed that the charges were coming at the same time as my automatic credit card payments and they told me to call National City Credit Card.
Luckily, I had kept the name and number of the representative I spoke with when I originally set up the service (he mentioned to call back in a year to continue the service). When I called and spoke with him he told me that yes there was a $10 monthly fee and that he had mentioned it when we set things up.
I should have been tipped off to how things would go by that statement of his. How could he have remembered me from 10 months ago and be so sure that he told me about the monthly fee? I asked him if they recorded the phone calls and he said that many times they did. I said I would like to hear him telling me and me agreeing to paying a $10 monthly fee. I asked him why I would agree to pay $120 in fees per year when the whole point of our conversation was to eliminate me paying extra fees due to forgetting a payment a couple times per year. The cost of missing a couple payments was far less that the $120. I asked to speak with a manager.
After about 2 minutes a manager came on the line. She had been briefed on the story and stated that there was nothing they could do. She asked why it had taken me so long to report the issue. I will admit, I could have checked my statements online while I was gone but I didn't. However, that does not excuse the fact that I was not told the most important detail of this 'convenient' National City service.
I asked the manager to hear the recording of my phone call. She stated it was against company rules to share it with me. When I persisted she said she had already listened to the call and that the representative had told me about the monthly fee.
At this point I was beside myself. How could she have listened to the call in the short time I was on hold? The original conversation took about 5 minutes and that doesn't even include who knows how long it would have taken for her to find the recording let alone listen to it.
I asked her what was said in the conversation. Here she made up some fake dialog that said how he told me about the fee and how I agreed. If I hadn't been so angry I might have found the whole thing comical.
After her blatant fabrication she wouldn't make any concessions on removing the charges. She was adamant that the company did no wrong. She also would not even agree to the logic that I would never have signed up for a program to save money when simple math could prove it would cost me more.
She offered to remove another fee from my bill which amounted to approximately half the cost of the unwanted charges and essentially gave me a take it or leave it ultimatum. Frustrated beyond belief, I took the offer. Since then I have regretted taking the 'bribe' and not pushing my case further.
I wonder how many people they coerce into this plan either on purpose or via negligence only to keep their money.
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